


soft disturbance in the deadfall

by Odaigahara



Series: Soulmate September 2020 Plus [7]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fae & Fairies, Fae Logic | Logan Sanders, Gen, Kid Fic, Kidnapping, Morality | Patton Sanders is a Sweetheart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27196682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odaigahara/pseuds/Odaigahara
Summary: Day 1: Name on Wrist*“You have to hide first,” Patton explained, and then, because he was being rude not introducing himself: “And I’m Patton! I can be the one who hides this first time if you’ll hide next time.”He faltered before he could say anything else. The boy’s eyes had suddenly gone wide and dark, cold wind sweeping through the playground and stirring the edges of soggy, browned leaves into the air; Patton shuddered and touched the other boy’s arm to see if he was distracted or something, and his new playmate’s gaze snapped back toward him.“Patton,” he said, sounding wondering and weird, almost shaking.“That’s me!” Patton agreed. “Who’re you?”“You know who I am,” the boy said, strange expression falling back into irritated confusion.
Relationships: Logic | Logan Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders, Logic | Logan Sanders/Morality | Patton Sanders
Series: Soulmate September 2020 Plus [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932382
Comments: 27
Kudos: 124





	soft disturbance in the deadfall

**Author's Note:**

> TW's at end notes
> 
> Many thanks to parallelmonsoon for beta reading!

The playground down the street was half-engulfed by mist, dewy sparkles condensing on the swings and slides and rubber shavings cushioning the ground. Patton always felt like he was bouncing when he walked across them, springing into the air like he had those Moonshoes on TV; he broke into a run as he barreled toward the playset, grabbing the sliding pole to whirl around and stop himself. The raindrops clinging to the cool metal made his hands all slippery.

Patton was six years old, had finally caught up on learning to read like his teachers and parents had said he would, and had just realized he could sound out the name on his wrist for the first time. The excitement made him feel like a shook-up soda can.

His mother had let him run down the street to the park- not before making him promise to run right back if someone he didn’t know tried talking to him, and not before telling him to stay out of the woods so she could still see him from where she was weeding the front yard- because she’d sensed it, Patton thought. She knew that he was about to jump out of his socks with happiness, so she was gonna let him play until he could think straight again. He had the best Mommy, because she could always tell this kinda thing about him before he could. She was _intelligent_.

Patton hoped his soulmate would be intelligent, too. Or that they’d have brown eyes like Patton, or be big and tall like Mr Iglesias the music teacher, or have six fingers on one hand like his father said happened sometimes so they could give slightly more hug than the average hug. Or they could have bluish eyes that switched to green and gray depending on what color shirt you wore like his Nana, or be really short and skinny, even smaller than Patton, or be able to climb trees really high even though that was dangerous and you weren’t supposed to do it without an adult around-

He wiped the droplets off one of the swings and sat down, squirming in vague annoyance at how it still made his clothes wet- he hadn’t thought to wipe off the chains and now they were rubbing water on his shirt- and glanced at his wrist, vibrating with excitement. Virgil said the name was only readable to the people it involved, and since he was practically grown-up Patton had to believe him; that meant no one but Patton was able to read this super special name, which made Patton super special, too. And made his soulmate extra secret _super_ special, because they were a secret only Patton knew.

Patton wasn’t good at keeping secrets, though. He was gonna run back and tell Virgil as soon as he got back from his theater club, and then probably tell Mommy and Daddy after. Virgil got to be first because of brother rules.

 _First_ first was Patton, either way. He fumbled his puffy jacket sleeve back from his arm, shivering a little at the chilly air, and squinted at the scribbles on his wrist. The letters were slanty and strange, looking kinda like cracks in a wall or bits of spider web, but as Patton focused they got clearer, more like sounds he could match to sight. _Ell oh guh ah en._

“L-ow-gin,” Patton sounded out, frowning in concentration, and then recognized the name completely. One of his classmates had a middle name that sounded really like this one, and that name was- “Logan!”

The triumph was too much to contain. Patton kicked off from the ground, swinging back and forth the tiniest bit, then had to get up and climb the playground equipment and inch down the slide on his feet so he wouldn’t get his pants wet. Then he thought about what would happen if his soulmate was here now, looking around at the street and the cold bare branches of the trees, and sang to himself, “Logan, Logan, had a slogan, here right now right from the go-gan,” making up words in his head when he couldn’t think of what to rhyme.

He bet Logan had fancy shoes. He bet he was as tall as a tree and older than Virgil so he and Virgil could be friends and argue about inappropriate music, or Logan was teensy as a little baby mouse and could live in a Polly Pocket house and wear snappy plastic clothes, or he was actually a robot who could turn into a car like Bumblebee and be nice and play House and let Patton be the daddy instead of the baby. The girls at school always made Patton be the baby.

Patton cheered even more at that. He went to climb up the equipment again, wondering if he could slide down fast on his feet if he took off his shoes and let his socks get all wet, and came face to face with another boy, slightly taller with the palest skin Patton had ever seen on anybody, so pale he blended in with the mist at the treeline. 

“Oh,” Patton gasped, because this was someone _new_ , “Hi! Did you move in with the lady on the next block?”

The other boy tilted his head. He was slight and skinny, so thin his wrists looked like bird bones, and his hair and eyes were the same deep brown. “No,” he said, sounding confused. “I did not.”

“Okay,” Patton said easily. It’d been a silly guess anyway. “Do you wanna play Hide and Seek?”

“I can see you right now,” the boy said, and Patton giggled. “I don’t understand why I would seek you.”

“You have to hide first,” Patton explained, and then, because he was being rude not introducing himself: “And I’m Patton! I can be the one who hides this first time if you’ll hide next time.”

He faltered before he could say anything else, bewildered. The boy’s eyes had suddenly gone wide and dark, cold wind sweeping through the playground and stirring the edges of soggy, browned leaves into the air; Patton shuddered and touched the other boy’s arm to see if he was distracted or something, and his new playmate’s gaze snapped back toward him.

“Patton,” he said, sounding wondering and weird, almost shaking.

“That’s me!” Patton agreed. Now he had his answer: his new friend hadn’t heard the name Patton before! That was a shame. Patton thought his name was pretty darn nice. “Who’re you?”

“You know who I am,” the boy said, strange expression falling back into irritated confusion. “You called me.”

“Called you?” Patton asked, and then remembered why today was so special and lit up with a grin. “Oh! I did! You’re Logan!”

Logan flinched, eyes going wide again, and Patton rushed to hug him. “That’s so cool,” he gushed, “I didn’t think soulmates worked like that! My big brother said you have to find them and it takes forever and sometimes you don’t find them at all, but you’re right here so maybe he just never read his name right. He’s a silly.”

Logan nodded, taking that information in. “I’m un-silly,” he said, or something like it, and Patton frowned.

“You can be goofy if you want,” he said firmly. “Just ‘cause you aren’t silly doesn’t mean you can’t play.”

“I would like to play,” Logan said after a moment of deliberation. “Hide and seek?”

“I’ll hide,” Patton promised, “and you count to thirty and come after me and find me, and then you hide and I count and I find you. Can you count to thirty?” Patton could, but he wasn’t very good at it. Virgil said he always forgot the stuff between twenty and thirty and skipped straight between.

Logan said, “I am able to count to any number,” sounding baffled. Patton shivered in excitement, wondering if Logan would know to check the dip behind the swing set if he hadn’t been there before. “Do I begin now?”

“Yep! But you have to cover your eyes,” Patton said, and when Logan started counting he ran to hide where he always did, scrunching up out of sight where kids always thought the playground ended.

Logan found him after a minute, not long after he’d finished counting; he touched Patton’s shoulder from above, making Patton yelp in surprise- he was crouched on the wood border keeping all the rubber shavings in, perched like a blue jay- and said, “Is it my turn?”

“Yep! You found me, fair and square,” Patton said, only a tiny bit disappointed that his hiding place hadn’t lasted longer, and the weirdest game of Hide and Seek he’d ever played began for real. He took ten minutes to find Logan, trawling through every corner of the playground before finally looking up and seeing him curled between branches high up in a tree; then Logan found him in a tree hollow, and Patton found him clinging to the underside of the slides, and Logan found Patton hiding behind a car parked across the street-

“I would like to play a different game,” Logan said after that, bright-eyed and fidgety. Patton listened to the rules in bemusement, trying to work through how to actually play, but he got it once Logan showed the way. They had to find uneven spiderwebs and misshapen acorns and plants with the wrong number of leaves, knots in trees that looked like human faces and mushrooms turned inside out.

Patton managed to find a spiderweb that’d gotten all clumped up at one end and a moldy acorn without a pointy tip, perfectly round; Logan found a garden spider with white stripes instead of black, an oak leaf with two stems, and a tree that looked kinda like it had a mustache if you turned your head sideways.

“You’re really good at this,” Patton said, a little crestfallen.

Logan said, leaning close and bringing the acorn to his nose to sniff, “You have sharp eyes,” tentative and complimentary. “This acorn is certainly anomalous.”

“It looks like an acorn to me,” Patton said, perking up at being told something nice. “Just a weird one.”

They traded off games after that, playing Freeze Tag even though with two people it was kinda silly and a game where Patton had to remember strings of words and make them rhyme with what Logan said. Patton taught Logan patty-cake and all the marching songs he knew from Cub Scouts- “No, it’s _left my wife and the forty-eight kids, the old gray mare and the peanut stand-_ ” “Why would I ever wish to sell peanuts?”- and Logan taught him an odd, lilting melody that made three cardinals land and stare at them, two brown and one red, until they finished singing.

Patton tried to keep the words in his head, but they flew off with the birds; when he tried to copy what Logan had just taught him, all that came out was gibberish. “I guess I’m just dumb,” he said mournfully.

“I don’t believe so,” Logan said, and then added, tentative, “Could I help you remember?”

“You’re my soulmate,” Patton said firmly. “You can help me do anything.”

Logan cocked his head and put a chilly thin hand on his cheek, fingertips like icicles, and said, “ ** _Patton_** , repeat after me and remember this, from now until the death of us both,” saying the words like he was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, like he remembered them but wasn’t sure what they meant. Then he sang the song again, something in it tugging at Patton’s chest and making him copy exactly, voice flying free like it’d escaped his tongue, and sat back. “Now sing it,” he said, and Patton blinked and sang.

The cardinals came back. One of them hopped up to Patton’s hand and sat in it, curling its tiny legs under its body, and Patton gasped. “ _Logan_ , look!” he squealed, and Logan’s head jerked around to stare at it. “He’s sitting on me!”

“She,” Logan corrected, and Patton nodded, wide-eyed. “It’s because birds enjoy this song. My father says it reminds them of flying to warmer places.” Patton grinned at the bird, then at him, and Logan said, cheeks going pink, “May I cease looking now?”

“Uh-huh,” Patton said, because Logan had been nice and looked and the bird was already flying off. “Bye, bird!”

“Bye, bird,” Logan echoed, settling close to his side. His body felt as damp and chilly as snow. A scary thought struck Patton.

“Logan, are you _cold?”_ he asked, tears springing to his eyes. Logan startled and stared, eyes going panicked. “’M sorry. Do you want my coat?”

“Why would I want your coat?” Logan asked, bewildered. “I do not desire anything that would make me warm.”

“But you’re _cold_ ,” Patton sniffled. “Being cold’s no fun.”

“It’s fun for me,” Logan said, nose wrinkling like he didn’t like the word.

“Are you sure?” Patton asked fretfully, “’cause Mommy says if you stay out too long in the cold your unmute system gets messed up and you get a cold and then you’re sneezy and have to take pink medicine.”

Logan blinked at him. “You get sick,” Patton explained.

“Too much warmth will make me sick,” Logan said with certainty.

“I’ve never heard of that before,” Patton said. “My brother doesn’t like getting cold.”

“He and I are not the same,” Logan promised, and Patton nodded, leaning on him. There was a silence, punctuated only by the distant caws of a bird and muffled music from a neighbor’s open garage. Even though it was a Saturday, no cars had passed them by for hours.

“What time do you have to get back?” Patton asked. “My mommy says I have to go back after a couple hours, since I gotta help make my cake.”

“Why does she need your help preparing food?”

“It’s for my birthday,” Patton said, proud. “I’m turning seven tomorrow.”

Logan whirled to be in front of him, staring into his face. “You don’t _look_ like an infant,” he said in confusion. “That doesn’t make sense. Were you born from a stream-hollow or the center of a tree, half-formed?”

“I was born from my mommy,” Patton said plainly. Curiosity took hold. “Did you come from a tree?”

Logan shook his head. Patton noticed his ears were sharp at the tips, like aloe vera. “I was born of ice and winter,” he said, and frowned. “Patton, are you _fully_ human?” Nod. “But you said your brother-”

“Daddy says I’m not really like him,” Patton said apologetically. “We’re two peas from separate pods, but still brothers so we have to share and not fight and I can’t bother him if he’s doing homework, and since we’re different he can listen to inappropriate music and stay up late but I’m not allowed till we’re older.”

“But you’re _seven_ ,” Logan said, staring and looking distressed.

“My Nana’s sixty and she’s _real_ old,” Patton volunteered, because maybe Logan didn’t get how birthdays worked, and Logan made a shrill, heartbroken sound that made Patton want to cry.

“You have my name,” Logan said, tears in his eyes. They didn’t fall, just stayed glittery and cold at the corners of his eyelids, turned to frost on his lashes. “When humans have your name on them, it means they’re yours, but if you’re mine I don’t wish you to _die-”_

“Logan?” Patton asked fearfully, eyes spilling over, because Logan was scared and sad, which meant _he_ should be scared and sad- “I can ask my mommy if you can stay over,” he offered, since maybe she’d know what to do. “We can ask her right now!”

Logan shook his head. “I’m not allowed to accept hospitality,” he said, sounding frustrated. “My father _said_. I have to return.”

“Oh.” Patton stared down at his soggy light-up sneakers. Suddenly hanging out felt a lot less fun, since it was ending. “Can you come back tomorrow?”

“Father says time is different here,” Logan said, pulling his legs up to his chest. “Leaving would be impractical, because then when I came back you wouldn’t be here.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Patton promised, “so I can be here after church. And you can come to my birthday party and eat cake. You wouldn’t have to bring a present since you wouldn’t’ve known you were coming.” He inched closer to Logan, bumping shoulders. “We’re gonna get pizza and play laser tag.”

“I can’t,” Logan said, tightening his fists around his knees. “I’m not allowed.”

“I could visit you?” Patton tried, and Logan sat up like he’d been shocked, turning and staring like a skittery cat.

“Would you?” he asked. “Would you accept my hospitality, and return with me to my father’s home? I have your name, so he would be unlikely to turn you away.”

Patton didn’t know what hospitality meant, except maybe that it had something to do with birthday parties. He wiped his eyes, cheering with the renewed focus in his soulmate’s eyes, and said, “I want you to be happy,” because it was true. “So I can visit if you want. I just gotta go back to my mommy and daddy and brother after, ‘cause I have my birthday tomorrow.” Logan watched him, tense and confused, and Patton said, “Where do you live?”

“I’ll take you,” Logan said, standing up, and Patton stood with him. “But we have to take care. Someone might steal you.”

Patton thought of white vans and strangers with candy and said, “I know about that. They told us at school.” Logan relaxed. “You’re not supposed to tell strangers anything about yourself ‘cause they might say they have a puppy and then you’re on a milk carton.”

Logan frowned. “Milk should not be involved,” he said uncertainly.

“It won’t be,” Patton promised.

Logan smiled at him, a tiny expression that made Patton beam, and said, “Also, please do not accept any food that is not from me.”

“’Cause you’re not a stranger,” Patton said, nodding seriously, and Logan nodded back, though it looked sort of like he was just copying what Patton did. “Okay! Can we be back in a little bit?”

“My father should agree,” Logan promised, taking Patton’s hand and leading him closer to the treeline, past where Patton had been told to stay. He glanced back guiltily, wondering if his mommy would be mad, but she wasn’t looking his way. The mist had grown deeper, so he could only see an outline of her crouched in the garden, anyway. “I can show you my star charts, and the alignments of the planets,” Logan added, sounding excited, and Patton squeezed his cold hand tighter.

Logan didn’t have shoes on. Patton blinked, wondering how he hadn’t noticed that until then, and let go of Logan’s hand to take off his own shoes, too, squishing the socks into them and lining them up under his favorite tree- the one Virgil had taught him to climb that summer.

“Now we match,” he explained at Logan’s curious look, and was rewarded with another little smile. His toes were chilly, but that didn’t matter. He wanted Logan looking happy more than he wanted to be warm.

Logan took his hand again, studying the writing on his wrist with bright-eyed concentration. Patton let himself be led, shivering at the touch of the thickening mist on his skin, and lost sight of the street entirely.

Dread gripped him, stark and unfamiliar like the first time he could remember looking at the dead forest in winter, but Patton pushed it back.

He'd just have to tell Virgil all about this when he got home.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: implied kidnapping/being stolen by fairies


End file.
